Skepticblog

Yes, I already know what you are thinking. I’m a mentalist, right?  Coincidence? What’s’ so unusual about it? You are thinking there’s nothing particularly paranormal about coincidence. Science, skeptics and psychologists have taken the concept apart and dissected it down to its constituent elements. It’s been already explained away and nothing worth debating. Yet despite such drab things as facts to the contrary, I’m not as easily convinced that coincidence is just an accidental event as some of my skeptical friends. (continue reading…)

This article piqued my interest today. I hoped it would tell me more about why I am the way I am. Why I like going to the same coffee house, why I enjoy known restaurants. No such luck. Instead I got a fluff piece where there should have been much harder data. It was as if not only the writer, but also the researchers interviewed had fallen into the trap of over-interpreting the results.

The results for the large part suggest that people become increasingly set in their ways or resistant to change after their 20′s. The 20′s are a time of exploration and massive change. Then it is all downhill.

“The fact that an age-dependent pattern of decreasing openness appears around the globe and in all cultures suggests, according to biopsychologists, a genetic basis.” (continue reading…)

Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena

What I once expected would distract me for a month or two, and last 5 or 10 episodes, has exploded into two and a half years and 150 episodes, and is growing like never before. Please join me in celebrating this (admittedly arbitrary, but fun nevertheless) milestone for the Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena podcast. (continue reading…)

Being a skeptical blogger is easy. You can say what you want, and everyone assumes you’re just some antisocial jerk in his basement. Doing it in real life can be… difficult.

I sometimes have trouble in social situations because someone will say something that is perhaps not supported by reality, and I have wind up jumping right in. I don’t say they’re stupid or anything like that, but people identify with their ideas, so saying that an idea is wrong is basically saying they are wrong, and maybe even implying they’re stupid (or, more likely, they wind up inferring it).

It’s a delicate thing, trying to change someone’s thinking. Do it too strongly and you violate Wil’s Rule (in his banner). Do it too weakly and you may feel you’re not true to your convictions.

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Mt. Wilson Observatory, as you will recall from the previous posts, is the location where we open and close the TV pilot. We used the 100” Hooker Telescope facility as the backdrop. We were looking for something awesome in scale that conveyed a sense of wonder, discovery and science. We originally were looking at planetariums, but after finding out about Mt. Wilson, we all agreed that this was a much better location. (continue reading…)

Darwin once described The Origin of Species as one long argument. Much of science and skepticism, in fact, is the art and logic of arguing, and most of these blog posts on Skepticblog are just long written arguments.

How to argue logically is therefore one of the core intellectual skill-sets of scientific skepticism. It is why skeptics will frequently whip out their logical fallacy detectors when arguing with defenders of not-so-critical thinking or true-beliefs. Even in everyday conversations we commit and encounter countless errors in logic. It is therefore highly valuable to be familiar with the common ways in which human logic goes astray.

Also the internet has resulted in an explosion of human communication, especially, it seems, arguing. Much of the social constraints are lifted when typing over the intertubes under a pseudonym. Knowledge of good and bad arguing are therefore more essential than ever for the computer literati and wannabe internet flame warriors.

I recently was pointed to this website, which reprints an internet meme that has been going around for a while.  It presents 38 Ways To Win An Argument by Arthur Schopenhauer, and offers advice on how to intentionally use logical fallacies in order to flummox your opponent, deceive your audience, and thereby win arguments. The person who pointed me to that website, however, missed the fact that the advice is satirical – it is meant to expose these tactics, not recommend them.

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Why we should show some compassion for Ted Haggard

I just watched the HBO documentary film, The Trials of Ted Haggard, produced by Alexandra Pelosi (which the media seem curiously intent on identifying not as a filmmaker but as the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House). The film is a follow-up to her 2007 film Friends of God, in which Haggard was prominently featured just before his downfall from revelations that he had homosexual relations with a male prostitute, with whom he also did methamphetamine. And all this happened right in the middle of the political debate about gay marriage, in which Haggard condemned homosexuality as an abomination and gay marriage as a sin that should never be legalized. (continue reading…)